


Reverently and Discreetly

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Pheromones equal Sentinel Sex Pollen, Semi-Public Sex, Sentinel/Guide Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:59:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as a community of sentinels is concerned, Jim's had long enough to bond with Blair, and he hasn't. Time for them to have a chance.</p>
<p>My look at how the Sentinel/Guide bonding trope might work in a canon scenario.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh so very dub-con, people. Look at the tags before you read. It's all pretty much angst and sex, sometimes at the same time.
> 
> Why chapter this? It's done but the first part has been much more thoroughly edited than the later section. Also, this part breaks off at a convenient cliff-hanger. I haven't enjoyed a good cliff-hanger in a long time. Since this is a case of 'every woman her own editor' if you spot typos/non US usage, please let me know and I'll fix it. Anything else will be considered but not necessarily agreed to.

The morning was cool, even if the sun was shining upon the world outside the loft windows, and Jim bowed to the temperature by wearing his robe over his boxers. His robe was, however, loosely belted and hints of Jim’s chest, of his legs, were continually revealed. There had been mornings recently when Blair had wondered if the show was purposeful, and pondered the likelihood that there was some sort of testing process going on from Jim’s side. To what purpose? Well, Blair found himself unaccustomedly cautious about speculating about that. This morning wasn’t one for speculation. Jim was untidy about his robe and preoccupied because late last night he’d had final confirmation that Incacha’s remains had reached Peru, at least, if not La Montana. Maybe never La Montana. Bureaucracy was a bitch sometimes.

Blair had decided that he’d be up early enough to make real breakfast this morning and industriously, but gently, turned the eggs scrambling in the pan. “Parsley? Chives?” he asked. 

“Yeah, sure.”

Blair had chopped the herbs with a liberal hand and he dropped a handful into the eggs. “Nearly ready.”

Jim looked up. “You’re not exactly being subtle about your mother henning here, Chief.”

Blair shrugged. “Everyone needs good nutrition at least some of the time. It won’t do me any harm to eat a proper breakfast, and you get the side benefits of my culinary skills too. No big deal, man.”

“Fine. I’m all for side benefits.” It sounded tired, and Blair brought the food around and sat and ate with a good appetite. Jim ate with more determination than pleasure, but Blair wasn’t bothered. The aim here wasn’t a compliment.

“God, I hate early lectures. And crazily scheduled days. I won’t see you until this evening, assuming that Cascade’s criminal element lets you get home for dinner.”

Jim nodded. “I’ll do my best to keep the criminal element in check,” he said. His gravity of expression stayed steady under the full force of Blair’s ‘are you shitting me?’ face and then broke into a small smile. “Shoo, Sandburg. Go make some undergraduate actually work for that degree.”

Blair stood and grabbed the day’s academic necessities and was nearly out the door when he paused. Jim still sat at the table, sipping at his coffee, and impulsively Blair dashed over and squeezed Jim’s shoulders with both hands. It was something that Naomi used to do, an encouragement for the start of the day. Not that Blair would ever tell Jim that, but if he was mother henning this morning then he might as well go the whole deal. “See you tonight,” he said and left with a fumble of his bag and his keys before Jim could do more than turn his head in surprise.

~*~  
Blair had parked in the lot five minutes’ walk from Hargrove, and when he reached it he stopped by the entrance and took a good look around. He had that itch between his shoulders, the one that said that there were eyes watching him. When he saw the man standing by his car he had a vague feeling he recognised him. The man was, Blair realised, one of the occasional new faces in his lectures. People came and audited lectures sometimes, or listened in as guests, but Blair remembered seeing this guy at least twice and at the time he figured out that his watcher was a repeat visitor he’d been troubled by the intensity of his gaze. It had reminded Blair in passing of David Lash, and when that second lecture had been the last that he saw of the man he’d been relieved, even as he’d felt stupid about his relief. One creep with an over-enthusiastic stare didn’t add up to a serial killer. Not even Blair was that unlucky.

That was what he’d told himself, but now he was backing away from his car and looking around for other people, anyone. There was a young woman approaching him from the sidewalk side of the lot. She was maybe Blair’s age, and her smile slowed him down. “Mr Sandburg. Blair?” she called.

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“No,” she said, “but you could.” It could have been a nice pick-up line, and she was pretty in a pale, long-faced way. Another time Blair could have been distracted, except for the man by his car and this young woman’s obvious nervousness.

“Look, I don’t want to scare you, but there’s a guy by my car, and I guess it doesn’t make me anyone’s idea of a hero but I’m planning on calling the cops if he doesn’t move on pronto.”

“You don’t need to do that. I understand that you’re interested in sentinels.”

That brought Blair up sharply.

“Excuse me?”

“I understand that you’re interested in sentinels,” she repeated.

“Uh-huh. And just how would you understand that?” Brackett forcibly intruded on Blair’s memory. Or did this woman have some sort of ‘in’ with his dissertation committee? 

She raised her hands, reminiscent of Blair himself when he wanted to reassure someone. Her face was earnest, her voice sincere. “Look, Blair. You want to know about sentinels, I can tell you about them. I can introduce you to a whole crowd of them. That’d be good for your study, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess it could be. How about we talk about it?” Somewhere more public than this, Blair privately appended to himself. But there was no denying the sharp flare of curiosity, or for that matter, the prickle of threat. He turned and found the guy from his car almost directly behind him. 

“So do you want to talk about sentinels, too?” The man was maybe in his mid-forties. His hair was thinning a little, but he looked tough and strong. Thick, wiry eyebrows only accentuated a deep-seated tendency to scowl, if the set of his face and its lines told the truth.

“Yes. But there’s a condition. You come with us now.”

Blair side-stepped away from them both. “Hey, hey. There’s no rush. What about an exchange of telephone numbers? Emails?”

“It’s now or it’s not happening.”

“Then it’s not happening,” Blair said, but the girl was quick. She latched onto his arm. “Blair. Please.”

Not by the smallest flinch did she indicate that she wanted anything more than conversation until an arm went around Blair’s neck in a choke hold and the world disappeared in spots and darkness. Blair woke up feeling sick and dizzy in the back of a car. His head was in the young woman’s lap.

“Sit him up, Melly.”

“He’s barely with it,” she protested.

“Sit him up!” the man snarled. “You don’t get a free go at him.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!” the woman protested. The car lurched to a halt and the man got out and came around to Melly’s door. 

“Out. You drive. I’ll sit with him. We’ll get enough bitching from the others as it is, at least we should have equal time.”

The woman hesitated. “Then you’d better follow your own advice and keep your hands to yourself – if you’re so worried about fairness.” Her voice was low and vehement – Blair thought it might be a pretty voice when she wasn’t so stressed. She got out, and Mr Creepy got in and sat next to him.

“Are you okay?”

Blair nearly laughed in his face. “Why ask, man? You shouldn’t go around using those holds on people if you don’t know the effects.”

Mr Creepy’s lips thinned in annoyance, and then he shook his head. “Well, you’re okay enough to be a smart ass. And this car has the child locks set, so don’t get any ideas about leaping out. That’s not going to happen.”

“If you say so.” Blair wedged himself into the far corner away from his fellow passenger. “I’m Blair. I’m not always on first name terms with kidnappers, but hey. You’ve attended my lectures so I guess you already know who I am.”

“I’m David.”

“And it’s Melly in the driver’s seat. So where are we going, David?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

“Yeah, I hear that a lot.” 

Blair’s apparent nonchalance didn’t look to be cutting any ice with his abductors. He looked around the interior of a slightly worn but otherwise ordinary sedan and then checked out the window yet again. They were already well on the fringes of Cascade, heading for rural reaches. “I’m starting to understand why you asked whether I was okay or not. Did you drug me, or just keep cutting off my carotid? I like my brain the way it is.”

“I monitored you. You were fine. Sentinels can do that sort of thing.”

“You’re… a sentinel?”

“And so am I,” said Melly from the front. “We did say that we’d introduce you to some. And we agreed, David. Not until we get him back to the old place.”

David confirmed that tendency of his face to fall into a scowl. “Just shut up and drive, then. The sooner we’re there, the better.”

Blair found his hands clenched into fists in his lap. “You know that I have friends in the Cascade PD, right? Who are going to check out what’s going on when I don’t show up at home soon?”

“Ellison might look for you. He might even figure out who’s got you. If he gave a damn he’d have made sure we didn’t have cause to come and get you long before now.”

“God damn it, David! Will you shut up? We agreed on this!”

“Yeah, well I didn’t agree to anything!” Blair said, his own voice rising. “And if David wants to talk then I’m not about to stop him, you know what I mean?”

Blair should have kept his mouth shut. He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as David looked at him with another of those penetrating stares and twisted his mouth into silence.

They drove on for maybe another hour, swapping the driving about halfway through. Blair took care not to take too obvious a look at Melly. She was small and thin, with short hair that feathered around her pretty face and neck. She smiled at him, a little shy and more than a little ashamed, but otherwise she stuck to the bargain that had been agreed between her and David and however many other people were in this mess, and kept silence. Paved roads came to an end and the car crawled up a dirt road into ever more remote hilly country, before David pulled up outside an old farmhouse with a gabled roof standing like a lookout over the slopes below.

There was a crowd waiting for them – or at least it looked like a crowd to Blair. There were equal numbers of men and women, most of them under forty. A couple of them looked to be young enough to be Rainier freshmen. They circled around, surrounding Blair and David and Melly. One of the women, with dark, Latina looks, asked, “It went okay?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” David said roughly. Blair managed a surreptitious count – nine new people, David and Melly, eleven men and women in total gathered together and all of them looking at him. Something between fear and flattery ran over his skin.

“ _I’m_ here,” Blair said, “and I want to know what’s going on.” 

There was an uncomfortable silence. The Latina woman said, “You really don’t know? You’ve been studying sentinels and you really don’t know?”

“I told you,” David said. “A hundred years of history isn’t good enough for Jimmy fucking Ellison. He has to have it all his own way.”

Anger rose in Blair like flood waters popping the top of a manhole. “Hey man. If you want any sort of co-operation out of me for whatever this little party is, you can forget about bad-mouthing Jim. I don’t want to hear his name from you. Have you got that clear?”

David shook his head. “Trust me, I don’t want to talk about him any more than you want to hear it. I’m going to have a shower. By the time I’m finished, I’m assuming that someone will have told him what’s what.” He stalked inside.

The dark-haired woman frowned, clearly troubled. She approached Blair and put one hand on his shoulder. Something shuddered deep inside Blair, while the woman breathed in sharply, and looked at Melly. “I couldn’t believe it when David told me. But he’s right.”

“Right about what? Is someone going to explain what the hell is going on?”

“You’re a guide.” 

“I know the term,” Blair told her.

“Well, actually it would seem you don’t. Let’s get inside, and try and explain a few things.”

“Yeah, let’s,” Blair said, and wished that he didn’t sound quite so much like a petulant twelve year old.

~*~  
They presented him with all sorts of peace offerings. A shower (in a modern bathroom with no window, just a narrow fan vent); food and coffee; several old journals and maps and a vast pile of loose papers that were revealed as family trees. He was very clearly not getting away right now, not with eleven men and women watching his every movement. They might fetch and carry for him, they might very nearly fawn over him, (no-one had come out and used the actual word but Blair knew courtship rituals when he saw them and there was a core of fear in his gut that was wrapped around with disconcerting interest about that observation), but they weren’t leaving him alone unsupervised, not for one single moment. “So Jim’s family comes into this arrangement here,” Blair asked, pointing to an entry dated 1903.

“That’s right,” Jeff told him. Jeff was the unofficial archivist. He looked a few years older than Blair, and dressed with a casual conservatism reminiscent of Jim. But then everything reminded Blair of Jim right now. 

Blair followed the lines of Jim’s family tree. He’d learned early that Jim’s parents were a sore topic. There were three ‘W Ellisons’ in the Cascade phone book but no ‘W Ellison’ or ‘Dad’ in Jim’s neat black address book in the drawer in the kitchen. Jim mentioned his father seldom, his mother even less. He knew that Grace lived somewhere to the eastern side of Washington State, and that was as much as Jim was prepared to say.

The lines of Jim’s family tree ended with Grace and with Jim. William Ellison wasn’t deemed worthy of record except as ‘husband (1)’, nor was Steven mentioned at all. The traditional marriage symbol of many family trees then joined Grace to a man whose name Jim had never mentioned at all, with the neat notation (g). Blair had a feeling that he knew the basics of the history contained in those tidily typed lines and creased sheets of paper.

Eleven sentinels. Eleven sentinels and a sentinel community that Jim knew of and had said nothing about to Blair. Blair was going to kick Jim’s ass. He was going to tear him a new one, there would be tirades and diatribes. He would never, never, let Jim hear the end of this; but first Blair and Jim had to be in the same place, together.

Jeff handed Blair a copy of an old National Geographic, well-handled and losing its gloss.

“What’s this?” Blair asked.

Jeff grinned. It was unexpectedly appealing for a man who’d conspired to abduct Blair. “There was an article about the counter-culture. The Watts community gets a name check. My father knew the journalist and he always reckoned that his editor must have wielded his blue pen pretty thoroughly, because there were a lot of questions asked about the community’s sexual practices. Dad tells me we assured him we were very into monogamy as well as organic vegetables.” His breath wafted across Blair’s face. There was a scent to him, not unpleasant but not anything commercial. Simply the scent of clean, healthy man, and Blair swallowed, as the careful cursive of the older documents and the blunt type-face of the documents written later all blurred into one.

David made a small noise of protest. “Keep your distance.”

Jeff said nothing directly in reply. He looked at David with cool disdain. “Lorrie. Perhaps you’d like to take things over at this point. Since I’m encroaching.”

Lorrie, the Latina woman, nodded. Exasperation made her pout a moment, but her face cleared as she sat directly in front of Blair. Everyone else was circled around, like a game of musical chairs that was all about getting the best position rather than the last seat, except there no seats. They were all seated on cushions on the floor of a roomy, airy space that might have been designated a living room in other circumstances. The walls were plainly plastered and coloured a nondescript beige. The floor was wooden and polished, as were the doors and window frames, and the room smelled faintly of beeswax. Plain, heavy, Indian cotton curtains hung across the windows. 

Over by the fireplace, set with unlit wood, was a double mattress, covered with a sheet. Blair wasn’t looking at it, and he wasn’t thinking of it. He was thinking of Jim, of James Joseph Ellison and his amazing ability to keep a secret. 

“So you’ve got it that we started as a nineteenth century commune,” Lorrie said. “Men and women looking to live their lives independently and without interference from mainstream society.”

“Not exactly a new narrative,” Blair said. “Except that somewhere along the line you turned into a gathering of sentinels.”

“That’s right.” Lorrie’s smile was encouraging. She was in her late thirties, Blair judged, and handsome rather than pretty. “Ephraim Watts was a scholar. He brought a copy of Burton’s Sentinels of Paraguay into the community, and there was a certain amount of what I guess that now we’d call outreach. Questing, even, given how far and how hard travel was back then. But the end result was that he found quite a few men and women along the west coast, down from Seattle to Los Angeles, and he let them know what they were, and that they could meet like-minded souls at his home.”

“Here?”

“No, we bought this later. And the more that sentinels mixed together, the more we noticed that the happiest men and women, the healthiest, had a particular sort of guide. Someone that they were very close to. Not just the companion of Burton’s book, but something more.”

“Something more,” Blair said quietly. All the stares of the group were a weight on him. “So what, Jim didn’t look happy and healthy enough to you? You had to drag me up here and see if you couldn’t achieve that something more? Because, guys, an invitation would have been nice. Modern society has excellent printing technology, you could have sent it to me in the mail, no kidnapping required.” Kidnapping was what he said. Rapine was a word hovering uncomfortably just beyond acknowledgement, because clearly they thought that Jim had some claim on him. Their defensiveness told that story, along with choke holds and kidnapping.

There were other words and concepts he was keeping shoved hard to the back of his mind.

“You have the gift, Blair.” Lorrie leaned forward to him, earnest and pleading. She wore a blouse with a v-neck, and her skin was smooth and tanned. “And Jim may be your very dear friend, but if he wanted you as his guide, we’d all know it. It would have happened and it would be imprinted into your skin, and your scent. Jim doesn’t need you. We do.”

“Look. I’m flattered. And I’m amazed and I’m utterly intrigued because the idea of a secret community of sentinels is something out of my dreams. But again. Why this? Choke holds are scary. Bundling me into a car and carrying me away into the boonies is scary.”

“Because Ellison was going to keep his paws on you regardless, even when he knows that there are people suffering for the lack of a true guide. He can get anyone to pinch his arm if he zones. And how often has he done that recently anyway? But if we came anywhere near you, watch him pitch a shit fit.”

“David!” Lorrie bellowed. 

“Christ, you nimrod, I know why you haven’t ever found a guide that would take you.” It came from a small, ginger haired man. Neal, Blair thought he’d been introduced as. David was on his feet and hauling Neal up by his shirt, his face red with fury.

The group turned their eyes as one to the scuffle. Blair scooted backwards, out of the circle of watchers for what was the first time in hours.

He didn’t stand a chance. He knew it, but he still kept on scooting along that golden polished floor and when he reached the door he was out and running. There were cars parked out here, and they were miles away from anywhere and the possibility of casual, opportunistic thieves, so therefore, maybe, just maybe, someone had left the keys in one of the vehicles. There were three vehicles – the sedan he’d come in, another sedan and an expensive SUV, shiny and deep red. He ran past the sedan he’d come in – he remembered Melly dropping the keys to that into her jeans pocket. There was nothing in the ignition of the other sedan and he ran his hands desperately into the depths of the dashboard compartment and nearly tore down the sunshade in his haste to see if anything was left hooked above the windscreen.

There was nothing. Nothing except the sound of his breath sawing in and out, and shouts and the pounding footsteps of people running towards him. He sprang out of the car and ran down the slope, vaulting over a wooden post fence to cut across a loop of the gravel driveway, paying no mind to the uneven pasture under his feet, just running with all his strength and all his desperation. It was getting dark. The sky was deep, dark blue and the stars were just beginning to appear, shining down on Blair’s futile sprint.

There was the whine of the SUV’s engine coming down the slope, and Blair clambered over another fence and into more pasture. There was a grove of trees another hundred yards or so on and he ran for it, stumbling once on the uneven ground. The ground was dry and hard and he skinned his knee as he skidded down and up again. The SUV had come around past his point on the road, and then with a crack of broken fence it turned onto the pasture land and cut across and in front of him, bouncing on its shocks. It was dark enough now that the headlights lit the ground clearly, shadowing every little blade of grass and undulation in the ground, and then the headlights shut off, making the growing dark even deeper.

Blair stopped so suddenly that he nearly fell. Lorrie and Jeff called his name as they got out of the SUV. Behind him Melly also called out his name.

“Blair! Please!”

“Please what? Please come up to the house and be a good little guide?” It came out a rough, dry bark. 

“You won’t lose anything. Whoever you choose will follow you – Cascade, wherever you want to go. I would. I promise.”

Lorrie and Jeff approached him quietly. They moved confidently in the growing dimness. Of course they would, Blair thought. And he was an idiot. He should have gone for the kitchen and grabbed a knife. He could have threatened himself if no-one else. Maybe they would have taken that seriously.

Melly came closer and laid a hand with gentle imposition across his wrist. He yanked it back, snarling, “Do not touch me!” Her body tensed with something that looked like hurt, before she took a step back with a resolute look, just as sure of her footing as the other two.

Blair’s skin tingled where she’d touched him. He could hardly see her now, but he’d seen her in the light earlier, slim and pretty. And here was Lorrie, with her striking face and heavy breasts, and Jeff with his scholar’s hands and broad shoulders. Blair had just run, absolutely in one sense for his life, and he was physically aroused and weighing up the attractions of his kidnappers. Adrenaline he told himself. Stupid stress reactions.

“Turn the car lights back on, Jeff,” Lorrie said. “Let him walk back to the house on his own. I don’t want the others claiming that we’ve primed him for ourselves.”

Jeff jogged back to the SUV and light streamed across the grass. “We’ll follow behind in the car, and light you,” Lorrie said. “Don’t try and run again. You’ll only hurt yourself, and we all know this area. We’re _sentinels_ , Blair. Don’t be foolish.” Her voice grew sharp. “Melly. Get in the car.”

Blair nodded. His jaw was set, a human habit to mark determination, and the necessity for silence. He didn’t want to be lit up in the glare of the lights and look quite as pathetic as he felt so he turned his back and tried not think about how much he wished that Jim would come roaring up that road in his car, Blair’s own one man cavalry in chinos and maybe one of those unflattering sweaters he wore sometimes. Blair could get behind any number of dubious Jim Ellison sartorial decisions, if only Jim were here. He looked up the drive. Outlined by the light from the open doors of the house were the rest of the sentinels. If he turned and ran again now, they’d chase him, like a wolf pack after deer.

The idea terrified him. (It ought to terrify him, but there was one moment’s crazy impulse to turn and run and see what exactly would happen. Would they fight over him? Would they cede to whoever reached him first, like a game of tag? Would they tear him apart each trying to get their little piece of him?) Blair reached the top and took the last humiliating steps back inside. He went and sat on the mattress with his back pointedly to the group. He’d been half-hard all the walk up the drive.

Pheromones maybe. Or some sort of psychological reaction brought on by stress and the awareness of their expectations. Blair didn’t have to pay any attention to it.

He put his body into a half-lotus – he wore jeans and it wasn’t comfortable and that was just fine. Nita came forward and lit the fire. She was a skinny black girl, nearly the youngest in the group, and she looked back at him as if she wanted to stare into his heart. Angry, Blair stared back, and Nita looked away again and concentrated on encouraging the kindling to catch.

As the fire grew, it made a good focus for meditation and Blair stared at it, watching the leap and pattern of flame, the changing flicker of shadow versus light. It was warm enough in the room that it wasn’t truly necessary, but it made a good excuse for the others to come forward. They would poke the fire, splitting barely there logs into piles of embers, and send the sparks spitting and shooting. And then they’d sit beside Blair a while, talking quietly. He’d told them not to touch him often enough that they believed him, but they were waiting, he knew. Waiting for him to give in to the intensity of their stares, of their patience, of their want.

Maybe they were right that Jim didn’t need him the way they seemed to think he ought, but that didn’t mean that Jim wouldn’t come for him. Blair just had to wait, but he could feel something building in him: restless arousal, a want of his own, even if it was just a wanting for the wait to be over, and for the eleven sentinels behind him to stop staring at him like predatory beasts biding their time. The fire wasn’t that high or hot, and Blair wasn’t sitting that close to it on the mattress on the floor, but he felt over-heated, and hyper-aware of his skin. Ready for something nameless and feral.

He knew that Jim was coming for him, but he was getting scared that Jim would come too late.

~*~  
In what Blair was mordantly calling the early courtship phase (so about eight hours ago then) he’d noted that there was always an edge to the other sentinels’ conversations when they mentioned Jim. They were quieter about it than David, they got irritated with his inability to control his grudge – but no-one was leaping to defend Jim. Lorrie might call Jim Blair’s ‘dear friend’, but she only wished David would shut up about him because it would have a negative effect on how Blair viewed the sentinel group, not because she gave damn about Jim Ellison.

They’d been happier talking about Jim’s mother, and Blair took a vicarious and probably unethical enjoyment in leading that conversation on, because Jim’s mother was more of a no-go area than Jim’s dad, and Blair was curious, even now with sentinels breathing down his neck in barely concealed anticipation.

“She found a guide, and brought him back to meet us. We call it confirmation….”

“I was brought up Catholic, and it was uncomfortable using the term at first,” Neal butted in. “But it makes sense, because it confirms that your guide is yours, not for anyone else, and makes them part of the group. When you choose – we’ll go to Ephraim’s big place north of Tacoma. There’ll be one hell of a party.”

“With a mattress on the floor?” Blair had asked. He hadn’t meant for his voice to climb quite into the incredulous heights it reached, but he kept getting punchy, and then he’d get it under control only to lose it again.

Laughter rippled through the room. Jeff said, “This is different. Grace brought her guide back, but he was already hers. It was a formality. But this… We’re all hoping, Blair. And we need… evidence when we lose our chance. We need to see the bond locked down, and then we can accept that it’s just not our turn this time."

But that was eight hours ago, and what had been an interesting if out there concept to Blair was becoming increasingly an intense reality. It was true night now and the only noise was the moan of the wind running across the land outside. Some of the sentinels were sleeping, curled up on the floor behind him, but others were awake, just as focused on Blair as Blair was on his internal struggle. It would be – interesting, it would answer some of the questions that Blair seethed with if he stood up, and wandered among the men and women behind him until something clicked, and he took one person’s hand and led them back to the mattress in front of the fireplace.

But Blair already had answers to some of what would happen if he gave into that increasingly insistent instinct. He might get to go back to Cascade, there might even be a vastly more complicated and thorough dissertation. But Jim wouldn’t be in his life anymore, Blair had a sick bedrock certainty of it, based on the dynamics that he’d seen in this group, and based on his own knowledge of Jim Ellison and the man’s personal fault lines. 

It was all speculation, but speculation was all that Blair had for distraction right now. If Jim associated this group with his mother’s loss, if David and Jim had butted heads at just the wrong point, then yes, Blair could totally understand that Jim would turn his face away. He’d turned away from Steven for far less. And groups didn’t forgive that. Groups had ways of punishing people who wanted to walk away, who wouldn’t share resources, who told you with either words or silence that one hundred years of history weren’t good enough. 

Blair wasn’t willing to be stolen away. Jim was his dear friend, Lorrie spoke truth there, and Blair was keeping him.

That meant fighting this thing building in him. He started rocking, but didn’t realise it until Lorrie asked, “Blair? Are you okay?”

At her voice, Blair shot upwards to his feet, pivoting to face the room. Immediately, everyone before him was alert.

“I need some air,” Blair said. As some of the sentinels got to their own feet, he yelled at them, “No! Just leave it, okay? I’m not going to run, I’m just going to stand outside in the yard and try to breathe! Keep an eye on me from in here, not out there!”

He stalked past them, past Lorrie, past Jeff, past Melly, past all of them. David stood leaning against the wall by the door, but he averted his eyes as Blair walked past. You do that, Blair thought. _You_ were never in consideration.

He stepped out into the chill night and reminded himself that nobody was in consideration. This wasn’t happening, something would break in him, like the end of a fever or a drug trip and people would see sense and he’d get the hell out of here and back home. He wanted to be home so much, back inside the loft, with his things around him sharing space with Jim’s belongings, and with Jim sitting there, right there, in his sock feet, smiling at Blair.

The sky was clouded over and it was very dark. A few annoying strands of hair blew into Blair’s face with the wind and Blair pushed them back, unduly irritated by the sensation. His hands were hot against his skin and unbidden he thought of other hands upon him. He turned his face up to the now starless night and groaned. “Oh god.” 

Movement in the black world caught his attention. He focused his eyes and saw it – a flash of glowing light that disappeared and then reappeared, dipped into darkness and then shone again. Headlights from a car, making its way up the dirt road to the house.

The car was still miles away, maybe, visible only because of the emptiness around it. Blair stared. There was no sound that he could hear but suddenly the men and women in the house erupted into the yard. Blair barely paid any attention to them. “Oh god,” he said again. “Jim.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I start earning the E rating. I dithered as to whether this counted as E or M, but decided in the end to go with E because of the whole dub-con setting on top of the sex.
> 
> Observant readers will note that chapter numbers have increased to four. Whatever I did, I was going to end up with lopsided chapter lengths and have decided to go with four rather than the original three. In balance to that decision, the next chapters will be posted every two days rather than every three as was originally planned.

They forced him back inside the house. It took two of the strongest of them; David, and another big man called Mark, hauled him inside. Knowing that it was Jim out there (and Blair did know it and didn’t care how he knew) broke his tenuous control and he kicked and flailed without restraint and left bruises on David and Mark. Their hands were too hot, they gripped too hard, and there was only one person Blair wanted touching him. They dragged him to the thrice damned, _fucking_ mattress, and forced him onto his knees, while Melly crouched in front of him and begged him to calm down. Then she joined the other eight who weren’t holding him. They stood in a loose line in front of Blair, facing the door, and when Jim stalked in with his gun at the ready they presented him with an embarrassment of targets and didn’t flinch or move.

“It’s been a while, Jim,” Lorrie said.

Blair struggled for control, on the edge of panic, and in some more rational place of him unsure why. He and Jim had faced dangerous situations before now; Blair’s heart had pounded other times, his breathing had come fast, but there had seldom been this urge to scream out, or struggle quite so frantically against the hands holding him fast. He shut his eyes and tried to find some peace and thought.

“Get your hands off my guide,” Jim said. Blair’s head shot up. He couldn’t even see Jim properly for the wall of sentinels in front of him, but Jim sounded just as on the edge of control as Blair was. A gap opened briefly in front of him and he caught Jim’s eyes only for a moment before the line of sight was gone again. David’s hand ground into Blair’s wrist so hard that Blair had to grit his teeth against the pain.

Lorrie’s hands clenched. “He’s not your guide.”

Jim took another step forward, and the line of sentinels tightened. Some held hands, or placed their hands upon their neighbour’s shoulders.

“What are you going to do? Who are you going to hit, or shoot? Nita? Melly?” Lorrie’s voice was scathing.

Blair spoke up, his voice over-loud with stress. “What if I say that I _am_ his guide?”

Lorrie didn’t turn to face him. “You aren’t.”

“You’ve all been waiting for me to hurry up and choose. So, fine. I choose Jim.”

David spoke then. “I say yes. On one condition. That they prove it here and now.”

“With pleasure, asshole,” Blair said, into the heavy silence. 

The sentinels had broken their line and were flowing around the room, blocking the way to the door and leaving Blair and Jim facing each other. Jim stared in dropped-jaw outrage at David and then snarled, “No way. No fucking way. You bozos can spin it how you like, but the reason you carried him away in such a hurry is because you figured that if I hadn’t claimed him yet that it was due any time.”

Nita spoke up, her voice shockingly clear. “No, we figured that you were a selfish enough prick to keep a guide even when you didn’t want him.”

Blair was getting sick of the family feud playing out in front of him. “Let me up,” he demanded. Mark let go, and David jerked Blair to his feet before almost pushing Blair forward. The shove wasn’t needed. A bullet couldn’t have flown a straighter, faster line to its target, and Blair threw his arms around Jim’s waist. He pressed his face against Jim’s chest, half against the zipper of his jacket, half against the creased warmth of Jim’s old flannel shirt and he groaned with relief.

Jim’s voice was vibration against his skin as much as hearing. “I am not doing _anything_ here with Sandburg.” 

David’s voice was high and clipped, like a man in pain. “You say he’s your guide. So prove it. Or are you scared that you can fuck him till your dick falls off and you still won’t have a bond?”

“He’s already my guide.” Blair kept one arm hooked around Jim, but he turned and lifted his head, watching the others and their reaction. “Lorrie,” Jim said, almost a plea. She stepped forward, ignoring the gun that Jim still held, and placed one palm gently against Jim’s cheek. Blair waited, aware that this was important somehow, and suddenly deeply frustrated and angry with Jim all over again. Not angry enough to let go of him, though. Jim had an arm around Blair’s shoulder tight enough that breathing might become a long-term challenge and he stood his ground at Lorrie’s approach.

Lorrie shut her eyes in concentration, before they opened wide. “Oh, Jim. That wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done,” she said, like an exasperated mother. She stepped back. “You might be his sentinel, but that doesn’t make him your guide. David is right. You’re here, we’re all here, and he was primed by us. Confirm the bond, and you can go, and take him with you. But you confirm the bond or else you leave him with us.”

“No.” It was Jim at his most jaw clenched stubborn.

“Jim. It’s okay.”

Jim twisted to stare down at Blair. “No, Sandburg, no, it is not okay.” There was a light dangerously close to panic in Jim’s eyes. His grip on Blair hadn’t relaxed at all, and neither had his grip on his gun.

Jeff stood directly in front of the main door. “Can you shoot me, Jim?” He didn’t taunt. He looked scared, but he didn’t move either.

Blair tried again. “Jim. Come and sit down with me, come on, man, just come and relax.” He moved as if to slip out of Jim’s hold but instead took his hand and locked his own around it.

Jim looked frankly furious and when Blair led him to the mattress on the floor (because… because Blair had made it his space, it smelled like him, he and Jim had to sit somewhere, didn’t they?) he halted for a moment, something unreadable twisting his face. Blair dragged him forward and sat down on his haunches, while Jim went down on one knee, still angrily alert.

“Put the gun down, Jim. Nobody else here is armed,” Blair pleaded.

“That you know of,” Jim said sourly. But he took the clip out of the gun and put it on the floor in front of him. Then he sat, his legs drawn up to his body, and the gun itself he placed close against his hip. Blair watched the action of Jim’s long fingers and enjoyed the flex of the tendons in his hands. Jim had attractive hands, graceful and masculine, and Blair flicked his gaze to the men and women watching them and admitted to himself just how much he wanted those hands touching him.

The other sentinels remained standing. Jim disarming his gun hadn’t reduced the tension in the room. How could it? They were all waiting on the proof that Jim was going to fail, for his humiliation.

Blair shuffled forward on his knees and leaned his head against Jim’s. Seated like this there was no height difference to speak of. Blair inhaled. Jim wouldn’t fail, Blair couldn’t imagine Jim failing, and he wrapped his arms around Jim’s warm, broad shoulders and just breathed him in.

Jim froze utterly. “You’re crazy, Sandburg. High as a kite on pheromones.” Blair felt his head tilt to address the watching men and women. “You got him all mixed up pretty fast, didn’t you? Primed slick as a whistle. How do you think that happened? I told you he’s mine. I primed him, I claim the right to him.”

“You’re using our terms to claim him, you use our ways to claim him too,” Lorrie said. Her voice was stiff with anger. Perhaps there was disappointment there too. Blair couldn’t spare her any pity. That desperately uneasy, wanting emptiness in him had been briefly comforted by Jim’s presence, but now his mere presence wasn’t enough. Besides, there was a part of Blair that was furious enough with this whole ridiculous situation to want to take it to the end, to the ultimate conclusion and damn the consequences.

One hand crept from Jim’s shoulder to rest in a loose clench over Jim’s heart. He wasn’t pressing hard, so maybe Blair only thought that he could feel the racing beat. There was no mistaking the growing speed of Jim’s breathing.

“Unless you’re planning on shooting your way out of here, man, and I think not, then our options are getting limited.” Blair nuzzled his face against Jim’s neck – he didn’t mean to distract or seduce, but Jim’s neck was there and all of him felt so good. Jim still sat unmoving and silent aside from that frantic panting, and Blair struggled to find an answer to the impasse. “You guys wouldn’t consider giving us at least the illusion of privacy?” Blair asked. Was that his voice, that slurred, drunken thing? 

“No, I don’t think so.” It was Jeff. His eyes were huge and his face twisted with a weird mix of voyeurism and grief. “Put up or shut up, Jim.”

“Chief…” Jim gently disengaged Blair’s hold and Blair tried to swallow the protesting noise that wanted out, but then Jim turned so that he was facing Blair. He put his hands on Blair’s shoulders. “This… I don’t know if I can do this.”

Blair smiled, and lifted his brows in what he hoped was an encouraging rather than desperate expression. “Yeah, you can, Jim. I can live with an audience if it means that you and I can walk out of here afterwards. So can you.”

Jim bowed his head. His thumbs were moving in wide, hard, unaware circles where he held Blair’s shoulders, and the touch was driving Blair crazy. He put his hand out to touch Jim’s chest above his heart again, palm flat against the old flannel shirt and the rapid beat beneath the skin.

“Come on. You’re not going to tell me that you don’t want me, are you? You drove all this way to come get me.” 

Jim’s head lifted; grim determination wasn’t the preferred expression for Blair’s sexual partners, but right now he’d take what he could get. With fingers that shook only a little, Jim reached for the hem of Blair’s long-sleeved shirt and pulled it over his head. The undershirt followed and then Jim pulled Blair in close and kissed him. Only the one, but lengthily, fiercely driving his tongue into Blair’s mouth. Then he pulled back. “Better get the rest of your clothes off, Sandburg,” he said, and led by example, while Blair scrambled to strip off the rest of his clothes, not entirely convinced even now that Jim wouldn’t flee this surreal lovemaking. Jim did no such thing; instead he bore Blair down to lie on the cream fitted sheet and kissed him again, once on the mouth, the rest along his throat and collar-bone. 

Blair lay closer to the fire place, with Jim between him and their watchers for all the good that would do in a room full of sentinels. The kisses left Blair aching – the past hours of tension and half-arousal resolved into a hunger that only Jim could feed, and Blair clung to him, pressing himself into the reassuring solidity that was Jim – the muscled strength of him, and the hard-on that bolstered Blair’s confidence as much it intimidated him and turned him on. Jim wrapped his hand around Blair’s cock and the shock of pleasure left Blair arching off the mattress, crying out. Jim smiled at that and settled into a stroke that would surely make Blair come – except that he put his hand over Jim’s and stilled him.

“I want you to fuck me,” he said quietly.

Jim’s assurance melted into unnerved surprise. “Chief…. Blair.” The hand that had been doing those wonderful things to Blair’s cock settled on his shoulder, as if Jim was tempted to shake some sense into him. “We don’t have to do that. If this is going to happen, it’ll happen.”

Blair hushed him with a finger against his mouth. How to explain something that was far too big to be a hunch? This instinct that told him that the physicality of the act didn’t matter, but Blair’s attitude did? If ‘this’ was going to happen, then Blair needed to prove something, to the watchers and to himself as well, and him spread out and well-fucked by Jim would be evidence of the most indisputable kind.

“It’s okay, man,” he said, rushing on without thinking about the wisdom of his words. “I’ve done it before; if you need any advice, then you can just ask, no problem.” 

Jim’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and Blair figured that the explanation that he’d done it before with a girlfriend being the one fucked could wait. Blair’s point, urgent and insistent, was that he knew what was involved, if only second hand. “I want you to,” Blair said and pressed himself into Jim’s body. “And I’m not getting the impression that it’s going to be difficult for you.”

He’d made a misstep, even though he didn’t quite know what. He’d meant a simple, teasing reference to Jim’s obvious physical readiness, but Jim’s eyes blanked for a moment – not the intense attention of a zone, but its opposite, a disappearance inside himself far more profound than any simple shutting of his eyes. It was only a moment, before he took another kiss and Blair gasped against the surge of heat and want flooding through him.

“Your grand plan needs some sort of lube, Chief,” was all Jim said, like they were discussing a kitchen list.

“On the mantle-piece,” someone’s voice murmured from the watchers, and Jim stood and grabbed it, while Blair lay still and watched him move. He’d always liked watching Jim – why hadn’t Blair figured out that he would like this too, Jim naked and strong and beautiful and about to give Blair something that he’d never dreamed he’d want. Jim paused a moment as he turned away from the fireplace and looked down at Blair. Blair smiled, because that was a better look on Jim, that wondering, hungry expression that encouraged Blair’s hopes that he’d made the right decision. He put out his hands, and Jim fell to his knees like a dropped anchor and took Blair in his arms and held him very tight.

“Hey,” Blair said, and stroked Jim’s short, fine hair. It was comfort, but the touch held fascination too. It was, in its way, just as intimate as anything else they were about to undertake. Blair shifted so that he could see Jim’s face. “How much advice do you need anyway?”

“I know the mechanics, professor,” Jim said. His tone was dry, but his hands still shook as he let go of Blair enough to manage the tube. Barely, but enough to be seen. 

Blair laid his hand over Jim’s, and then found himself distracted enough to run his hand up Jim’s forearm. Everything about Jim’s body was amazing, every aspect of it as compelling as Jim’s senses had ever been. Jim had clear gel on his fingers now, and Blair abandoned one exploration for another and rolled onto his stomach, and lay there, his head cradled on his folded arms.

Jim did indeed know the mechanics, and the touch moved from ‘strange’ to ‘interesting’ to ‘more’ with unexpected speed and intensity before Blair moved gently away and turned to his back once more. Instinct again, an urgent suggestion that he’d lost eye contact with Jim long enough, and that he should renew it. There was desire on Jim’s face. A focused concentration. Some embarrassed frustration that almost made Blair regret that he wasn’t on all fours as they fumbled Jim’s breach of his body at the first try.

Embarrassment was lost in the first successful stroke. “Oh my god,” Blair said. Jim was silent, but his noisy breathing and twisted face told their own story. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Don’t stop.” Jim bent to awkwardly kiss Blair before he concentrated on his movement, a steady rhythm Blair increasingly lost himself in after the first discomfort.

There was something else, not a rhythm. It was more like a pressure, or a flow, a sensation that might have been in his gut or his throat or his mind. It became overwhelming, and Blair clutched at Jim’s arms, his nails leaving marks in the frenzy of his hold. “Jim?” he questioned, before something like a fall took him, and the shock of landing. He cried out.

There was a moment of utter stillness. Breath was gone, movement was gone. Blair lay there, suddenly hyperaware that he was lying on a floor, surrounded by strangers, and that Jim’s cock was inside him; he had another moment of panic.

Then Jim leaned closer. Still inside Blair but no longer moving, his arms curled around Blair’s head and enclosed him. “It’s okay,” Jim murmured. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Somewhere out in the room, a woman said, “Oh, damn it.”

Blair hid in the circle of Jim’s arms long enough to take a couple of frantic breaths. “What the hell was that?” he demanded.

Jim ran his thumb along Blair’s cheek. “That, Chief, was the main event.” He turned his face to the onlookers, and on it was such a familiar expression: Jim Ellison, not suffering fools gladly. ‘Happy now?’ that disdainful glare enquired, and Blair was unexpectedly comforted.

“I hope it’s not entirely the main event,” he said. “Because I don’t think I can get back into my jeans straight away. If you know what I mean.” The innuendo came out shyly. Blair and arousal had come adrift from each other in that jolting change but he tried tilting his hips, and found that sexual pleasure was still within reach. “Okay?” he questioned, and Jim nodded.

“We’ve got this far. Let’s finish this thing properly.”

“Properly. Yeah. Do it, Jim.” Blair had let women take the lead and ride him while he lay passive (and highly appreciative) but that was a universe away from being wrapped around and taken by Jim. Blair held on, aware that he was growing sore, but god, overall his body approved of everything that was happening – of the way that Jim felt, in him and around him. Jim’s breathing was music, his sweat was perfume and fine wine, the touch of his skin was silk. Jim took more of his weight on his arms, and Blair took the opportunity to handle his aching cock. Jim made an approving, wordless noise, and kept the rhythm steady. His face contorted with effort, and Blair realised that Jim was pacing his own pleasure to run with Blair’s, trying to get them off as nearly together as sentinel senses could manage.

Their eyes met, and then Blair couldn’t really see anything, too caught up in sensation, struck into silence with it. He barely noted Jim’s groan, or the collapse onto him, although he felt the final slide of Jim’s cock from him, and the rock of Jim’s ribs into his own as Jim tried to catch his breath. They lay together, limbs tangled up in sweet warmth and sweat. But then Jim got up, and with a blank, business-like expression that chilled Blair inside and out, gathered up Blair’s clothing and offered it to him in a one-handed, messy scatter, a bouquet of boxers and jeans. “Get dressed, Sandburg. We’re getting out of here.”

Blair took the clothes on auto-pilot, and dressed the same way, while Jim got into his own clothes with impressive speed. The clip for his gun he placed with obvious care in one pocket, the gun itself he held loosely in his hand.

“Come on, Chief,” Jim said. It was an instruction, an encouragement, heard how many times before now, but it was the first time that Jim had ever taken Blair’s hand in his to drag him along. Blair felt that he ought to protest this high-handedness (even as his mind inanely noted that there was a pun in there somewhere, god, Sandburg, could you at least turn your brain to something useful?) but he followed meekly. Some of the other sentinels were gone – outside or to other rooms of the house. Lorrie remained. Her face was flushed, but to Blair it looked like anger rather than voyeuristic arousal. Melly sat on the floor against one wall, her knees curled, her face buried in her folded arms. She was weeping quietly.

Jim stopped in front of Lorrie. “I’ve confirmed my guide, like a good little disciple of Ephraim Watts.”

Fury flashed over Lorrie’s face but she swallowed it and said, with the tone of something rote and familiar, “Happiness to you and your guide. Blair, happiness to you and your sentinel.”

Blair nodded; the anthropologist in him wasn’t surprised by this distinctly hymeneal ritual and could even be interested by it. The man who’d just had sex with his best friend in front of a crowd of strangers endured rising nervousness that he did his best to hide, probably futilely given the company he kept in this moment. He spared a moment to look at Melly again. She sounded utterly desolate, but comforting her would be futile and stupid, for so many reasons. Blair knew that, the way that he knew that Cascade’s winters were drearily grey and cold.

He knew it the way he knew that Jim was just as desperately miserable as Melly.

~*~

The drive down the hill along the dirt road and onto the smoother quiet of asphalt was made in silence. Jim drove with a remote, icy control while Blair endured a wordless mini-breakdown.

Blair was an anthropologist; he’d studied psychology. He knew that human beings were subject to impulse and instinct and that they convinced themselves that the most rational of reasons were behind irrational decisions. Blair knew all that, but there’d still been a little, congratulatory part of himself that was proud of being the intellectual, civilised student of Jim’s primitive abilities. That veil of self-regard had been rudely stripped from him in more ways than one, and it was an iron and painful control that was keeping Blair’s breathing steady right now. It had seemed such an obvious choice when Jim walked in to give everyone the proof that they demanded, and now, just scant minutes after it all ended, Blair saw himself in his mind’s eye, flat on his back with Jim’s cock up his ass, and his skin burned. Blair tried, and failed, to discreetly squirm into a more comfortable position for said ass, and that, of course, was the moment that Jim asked, “Are you okay?”

Words exploded out of Blair’s mouth. “Which definition of okay are we looking for here, Jim? My ass is sore but not anything too painful, thanks for asking. Am I okay with having had sex with you in front of an interested audience? Well, actually, I have problems with that but strangely enough fewer than I suspect that you do, but we can chalk that up to my innate horn dog nature, right? Am I okay with discovering that you have apparently been undermining my entire fucking dissertation since the day we met? That one I’ll have to get back to you on.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that,” Jim said, and turned onto another side road.

Blair clenched his fists, shaking them almost in tempo while he struggled for calm. Exasperated sound crawled out past his clenched teeth. “I…. Jesus! What the hell can I say, man? The last day or so has been unexpected, to put it fucking mildly, and if you didn’t want me to have a meltdown in the fucking car maybe you should have just kept your mouth shut!”

“Okay.” Oh, he would, the bastard, he’d lock himself up tight.

Blair turned to look at Jim, as far as he could in the darkness. “Look, Jim. I didn’t mean it like that. But this is a pretty quantum shift in everything that I ever thought that we were about, and I’m sorry, I know that you must be having your own freak out here, and-“

He stopped. The road sign ahead of them said ‘Leavenworth, 20 miles’. “Where are we going?” he asked with surprising steadiness.

“I know a cabin up past Winthrop.”

“And why are we going up past Winthrop?”

“I guess you could think of it as our honeymoon, Chief.” Nothing good had ever come out of Jim’s mouth in that tone of voice, and Blair was sick of the psychological hits he’d been taking. Fortune’s punching bag, he was not.

“Explain.” There was silence. “Come on, this is not the time for the strong and silent shtick. Tell me!”

“We’re bonded.”

“It’s a word that got bandied around. God, do you know how much explaining you have to do to me?”

“Trust me, Sandburg. That I do know. But the short version for now is that we’re bonded. That means that we’re going to have trouble keeping our hands off each other for two or three days, and I’d rather deal with that in private.”

“If I’d ‘bonded’ with one of the others?”

“The same. Although they’d probably have let you have a bedroom for that part of it. You wouldn’t have needed to have all the sex on the floor.”

“Jesus,” Blair moaned, leaning forward like the image was a cramp in his gut before he forced himself straight again. The words had been a nasty little spit of venom, but at the thought of sex, sex with Jim, a darkly unexpected pang of pleasure ran through him. The car seemed full to bursting with their sweaty, musky joint scent. “I guess… I guess I should say thanks, huh? Blair Sandburg gets himself in trouble again and his trusty friend comes and saves his ass.” He laughed unpleasantly, and then cursed as Jim abruptly pulled onto the shoulder.

“I saved your ass.” Jim’s voice sat low at the back of his throat. “Quite an image there, Chief.”

Blair sat through another wave of heat. His melt-down was threatening to become literal.

“Did you know that Melly’s a nurse? Jeff works as a researcher for some human rights non-profit. Lorrie manages a rest home. I’d figure that they were the most likely candidates for you. They’re the ones I’d pick out of that bunch. Me, I work as a cop and it gets us into trouble on a regular basis. So how exactly did I save your ass, Sandburg?”

“So, what, I should have given in. Not waited for you? ‘Bonded’ with a fucking stranger because it’d be a guarantee that I wouldn’t get shot at?”

Jim’s breath caught. “It might have been wiser. I didn’t come after you out of altruism.”

“Well, excuse me for making the wrong choice, Jim. Maybe if I’d known about my options earlier I could have been more discerning about it.”

“Look, I was going to tell you.”

“When? After I’d finished the diss?”

“It’s always about the fucking dissertation, isn’t it? God, I’m a fool.”

Misery choked Blair. “No, no, it’s not about the dissertation. That’s just the easiest thing to bitch about.” He breathed, slowly, trying for calm. “I get that you might not have wanted to introduce me to them. You guys don’t exactly get along.”

“No,” Jim said. “Not anymore. And this little mess won’t help either.” 

“I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have… When you came in, you had a gun and if I’d just stood up and said ‘hey guys, nice to meet you,’ we could have left…”

“Sandburg, you didn’t have that choice by then. You get that, don’t you?”

“If you say so.” Blair kept remembering fragments of everything that had happened, but fitting it all together was too hard. Did he want his big picture for the dissertation, which had been all about Jim anyway? Everything came circling around to being about Jim and the way that Blair didn’t really like to think about a future where he was Doctor Sandburg, because where did Jim Ellison fit in Doctor Sandburg’s life? Blair bit his lip. That future Doctor Sandburg hadn’t fucked his research subject, but he wouldn’t have been able to calmly look back on his academic detachment either.

It was all such a mess, but Blair had the sense that it became a mess long before tonight’s events. Feeling terribly lost, he reached out for the one certainty that he knew of, and wrapped his hand around Jim’s wrist. 

“Blair,” Jim said. “That’s probably not a good idea.”

“Touching you? Why? Because we won’t be able to keep our hands off each other?” Blair pivoted onto his hip, not letting go of Jim. The car was lit by the dash lights alone, and Blair couldn’t read Jim’s face in the dimness. “It’s our honeymoon apparently, and we never even got around to the dating stage and some making out. Come on, indulge me.” He leaned in closer, grabbing at Jim with both hands. Jim wasn’t proof against this temptation and Blair was swiftly enclosed, just the same way he enclosed Jim.

“There’s no room,” Jim panted. He drew back, and shoved the car door on his side open and slid out, hauling Blair along to stumble over the gap between the seats and out into the brisk night air. Jim’s sentinel sight might be able to use the tiny amount of ambient light from inside the car, but to Blair it was pitch black. There was only the car body at his back to anchor him, and Jim’s bulk and heat at his front. Jim’s mouth pressed against Blair’s throat, lips and tongue playing along the skin there, and Blair leaned his head back to give Jim room to play while his own hands went searching down Jim’s shirt to the belt buckle of his pants. His hands fumbled in the dark with the slide of the belt, the undoing of buttons, the descent of the zipper, but Jim made no effort to either help or interfere. Instead, he cupped Blair’s face in his hands.

If a man could feed on kisses, that was what Jim was doing. The relative silence of their first sex was gone. Jim wasn’t loud, but he was persistent; humming his pleasure, occasionally speaking Blair’s name when he lifted his head for breath, or to nuzzle along Blair’s hair or skin. His pants and underwear must be around his knees, because there was nothing interfering with Blair’s exploration of his neatly curved ass. Jim only moaned, and pushed hard against Blair’s body.

“Slow down, baby,” Blair muttered. “That’s my shirt you’re rubbing against, it can’t be much fun. Unwillingly, he relinquished his hold on Jim to fumble at his own clothes. One of Jim’s hands dived to the task, the other wrapping around Blair’s shoulders. Blair’s clothes slipped and shifted and he was bared enough that the next time Jim pushed up against him there was only hot, sweaty skin, and cold metal against Blair’s ass. Blair was shoved up almost onto his toes by Jim’s hold on him while Jim thrust against him, his noises getting louder now, and caught in tempo with his movement. Blair held onto Jim’s shoulders, tremors in his arms from effort and the growing concentration of pleasure in his body. He mouthed at Jim’s throat and tasted salt before Jim groaned, sheer desperation forcing the way to orgasm, pressing the wet heat of his come against Blair’s belly.

It wasn’t enough for Blair. “Please, please, Jim,” he begged, barely knowing what he wanted except to get off. Jim changed his hold, swinging to lean against the car alongside Blair rather than in front of him. Blair gasped at the unexpected brush of cold air before Jim’s hand wrapped around his cock.

“When you did this, back there,” Jim said. “I wanted to do it.” He kissed Blair’s mouth, licking along the line of Blair’s lips with just the tip of his tongue, and stroking Blair’s cock with a tight, sure grip exactly as good and as right as Blair would use for himself when he wanted to come but he wanted it to last too. “Am I doing it right, Chief?” he asked, his breath hot against Blair’s skin.

It was an entirely rhetorical question, and the smug son of a bitch knew it. “Yes,” Blair said. “Yes, it’s right, it’s right. God.” He heaved up under Jim’s knowing hand, and saw lights behind his closed eyes, while Jim carried him through it all, his hand coming eventually to lightly rest over Blair’s genitals in a protective, possessive hold.

Blair opened his eyes. It was still night, and his surprise was stupid. What they’d done must have taken five minutes. Maybe they’d stretched it out to ten, he had no idea. Jim had one arm around Blair’s shoulder, Blair had one around Jim’s waist, and they were standing there in the dark by the side of the road with their pants down.

“Oh my god.” Blair laughed, but it was shaky. “That should not have been as good as it was.”

“At least it was good,” Jim said, and let go.

The rustle of cloth indicated he was putting his clothes to rights, and Blair followed suit. His nose wrinkled as he bent to grab his underwear, but since there was no shower anywhere in sight he would have to endure and so would Jim.

“Hey, Chief,” Jim said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I want you to do me a favour and not to think or speculate about this whole thing until we reach the cabin. Can you do that?”

Blair considered. “So, not talking about this sentinel thing? As opposed to absolute silence?”

“You want to comment about the journey, or the route, or the latest crazy shit that Professor Thingamajig wrote in his last paper, that’s fine, but let the rest of it wait until we’re not driving.” 

“No talking, speculating or thinking. Come on, man, not even thinking?” The complaint in the last word was wiped away by the touch of Jim’s mouth against Blair’s own. Blair’s hands clenched into Jim’s shirt, and he forced the kiss deeper, opening his mouth under Jim’s. It was good, kissing Jim, but it was cold out here. “How far is it, anyway?”

“Not that much longer,” Jim said. He ran his thumb down Blair’s face, and then took Blair’s arm and guided him back to the driver’s side door. “The ground’s rough. You might as well climb over my side.” Blair did so and settled back into his seat with a sigh. He’d complained about Jim’s conditions for the rest of the journey but having made his protests there was barely a word in him. Instead, he stretched out his arm and rested his hand on Jim’s leg. Jim made no comment. He just kept driving.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we have some arguing and angst.

It was another dirt road leading to the cabin near Winthrop, and it was nearing dawn as Jim pulled up outside. Blair had an impression of the shape of the building (A-frame) and of the scent and temperature of the air outside the car (forest sharp and cold) before he and Jim stumbled inside, with Blair guided through the living room space and into a bedroom where they fell together on a mattress.

Jim’s hands ran obsessively along Blair’s body, but not with any demand. Blair accepted it, too tired to respond except to turn on his side to curl against Jim, pressing his face into Jim’s shoulder and inhaling. He was asleep within scant minutes.

When Blair woke there was daylight filtering through the curtains, which meant that he could properly see where they were. He and Jim lay close but somewhere in sleep they’d let go of each other. The crazy sexual need had abated – for how long Blair didn’t know. He did know he wasn’t lying comfortably. There was a pillow shoved against the headboard and he twisted and grabbed it, resting his head and turning to lie on his side towards Jim.

Jim lay on his side too, asleep in his rumpled clothes. He was completely vulnerable, completely unaware, and Blair looked his fill. Even asleep, Jim still looked tired. Beard bristle lay dark against his skin and his hands were curled against his chest. Then his eyes opened, and he looked right back at Blair, not smiling, just calm. Then one eyebrow lifted and Jim said softly, “Good afternoon.”

“Is your time sense really that good or are you a good guesser?”

Jim leaned up on an elbow and looked at his watch. “Looks like it’s a little of both.”

“It’s afternoon.” Blair grabbed Jim’s wrist and stared at the watch face. “Oh my god, it’s 1.56 on Tuesday afternoon and I had a nine o’clock lecture this morning.”

Jim rubbed his hand across his nose and mouth. “And Simon will be worried about us. Hang on, Chief.” Jim swung off the bed, graceful even in haste, while Blair contemplated just how much trouble he was in and started mentally testing excuses for plausibility. He heard the bang of a door and then Jim came back in. He had his cell phone in one hand and Blair’s backpack in the other.

“It got handed in to campus security and Suzanne recognised it. She called me.”

Blair clutched his pack to him. “Yeah, well there’s sure to be at least a few more calls on my cell, and they’ll all be pissed off.”

Jim shrugged and entered a number. It was quickly answered.

“Simon, it’s Jim. I found him, we’re both okay, but I need your help. I need you to call Rainier and explain that Blair won’t be in for a few days. Make it ‘til next Monday; that should be safe enough.” There was a pause. “Yes, me too.” Another pause and a wincing frown from Jim. Blair presumed that Simon was not happy.

“Because this isn’t exactly the first time something like this has happened and it’ll sound more believable coming from you. Blair doesn’t need to be in any more shit over this than necessary….”

“… No, sir.”

“…It is what it is, Simon.”

Blair did some wincing of his own, because Jim’s voice in these exchanges had dropped into a hard chilliness that had no place in asking a major favour from your boss, even if that boss was a friend too. “What do you mean you want to talk to Blair?” There was another silence on Jim’s end of the phone. Whatever was said was apparently displeasing to both men, but Jim handed over the phone.

“Simon?”

“Sandburg, would you like to explain to me what the hell is going on?”

“No, because it’s personal to Jim.” Although the idea of explaining to Simon what had happened in that rural state farmhouse cut a channel of slightly unhinged amusement through him.

A heavily patient breath was drawn in Cascade. “But Jim seems to think that you’re the one who needs his ass covered in regard to his employer.”

“Well, if you could see your way clear to that, I’d really appreciate it, Simon. Monday sounds… achievable.”

Simon’s voice gentled and Blair wondered what impression he’d given in just two sentences to concern Simon. “Blair, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. There was a misunderstanding, but it’s all dealt with now, and Jim and I will be fine. Are fine. Look, Simon, I know this is a huge ask, and I know that Jim and I will owe you for about the next million years…”

“I’m glad one of you has a grasp on this situation.” Simon returned to acerbity. “Am I ever going to understand this little adventure?”

Blair sighed. “Probably not, but I swear it’s important. I promise. And it’s not as if Jim doesn’t have leave due, and you just have to be gruff and official sounding when you talk to Dean Finster-“

“And get a complaint of police brutality,” Simon broke in. It didn’t sound entirely a joke. Blair was aware that Simon was not a happy man, and he couldn’t blame him. “Finster. The man himself or just his office?”

“If you get his secretary…” Blair offered. “That would be okay.”

“No it would not, but I’ll do it. I take it you’ve already missed commitments.”

“Yeah,” Blair said unhappily.

“Put Jim back on the line.” It was a command and Blair didn’t delay. There was more brief conversation, with Jim barely speaking, and then the phone call was ended and there was silence and the two of them sitting on a rumpled bed in a strange house.

Soothing a rampaging Simon Banks had made everything almost feel like normal, despite their shared bed, and then Blair caught a whiff of his well-sexed body and everything was completely out of kilter again. He took refuge in the mundane. “Please tell me that there’s water here. A shower even?” he asked, slightly taken aback that he was the one asking these things rather than following in the tracks of a fastidious Jim.

“Yes, but first we have to check if there’s gas for the generator that runs the pump.”

“How come you know about this place?”

Jim went still a moment before he replied, “It belongs to my mother. Her father built it for her as a wedding present. Not to my father of course. Husband number two.”

“I’m starting to feel somewhat inadequate as a researcher,” Blair said, a little bitterly.

“Not your fault, Sandburg. I’m good at keeping my mouth shut when I need to.” Jim stood. “I’m going to check if the generator will start or not. Otherwise we’ll have to drive in to Winthrop.”

“We just drove out of Winthrop.” 

Jim shrugged off his jacket and smiled ruefully. “We both needed some sleep.” He left. Blair heard the jangle of keys and a quiet curse and a thud. A stuck door he presumed, and sat up and surveyed himself. He was sitting on this bed with his shoes still on, and he stank. He got out of bed and took a look around.

The room was furnished in a tastefully countrified style. The bedstead was solid wood and there was a dresser and an armoire. The mattress was covered with a fitted sheet and single blanket, and on impulse Blair moved towards the sliding closet doors set against one wall; a full length mirror made up one panel. Blair averted his eyes from his reflection and slid the mirror aside. Yes, more bedding on a shelf, laid down with lavender bags and cedar chips. That was worth knowing at least. His hands brushed against one woollen blanket, pale natural wool and baby soft, and then he turned to find Jim.

Engine noise filled the silence outside, and Blair followed it out the back door of the cabin to a yard with a small covered shed. Jim was there. Following hard on the noise of the generator was a rhythmic thumping and as Blair stood in the shed doorway Jim looked up with a triumphant smile. “The hot water runs on gas and I’ve checked the cylinders. I can offer you a shower.”

“More like I can offer you a shower,” Blair said. “Man, I reek.”

“Clean clothes are going to be trickier. Sorry.” Jim stood; like Blair, he smelled none too sweet.

“Another reason to head for town, I guess,” Blair said, suddenly shy.

“Yeah.” 

Jim’s face shadowed over, and Blair turned away, saying with false heartiness, “But hey, a shower. You’re a technological genius.”

“I know how to start a generator. That doesn’t make me a genius.” 

Blair knew Jim was following him, so he held the door open for him, and then walked into the cabin living space. “Well, hello rustic getaway paradise.”

It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. The cabin was revealed as not spacious, but comfortably appointed – well-stuffed chairs, expensive looking curtains, richly coloured rugs on the solid wooden floor. Solid wood and soft rugs notwithstanding, Blair knew that Jim was very close behind him. 

“Are there towels in the bathroom?” Blair asked brightly. “A nice place like this, I’ll bet there are. I’ll go check, right?” He made his escape.

There were towels. Facecloths even, but, no shower gel or soap, not even a dry sliver in the shower stall or on the basin. Nor was there a razor. But the water was hot and Blair soaked and scrubbed under it and rinsed his hair out. He was, if not clean, at least less dirty. Putting his worn clothes back on looked even less attractive but there was no other option. When he came out of the bathroom it was to the smell of coffee.

“It’s only instant, and there’s no food to speak of. A couple of cans of stew. But it’s hot,” Jim said and proffered a cup.

Blair took it and went to sit in one of the big armchairs. Jim had pulled back the curtains and the windows overlooked a view out of a post card. Blair sipped his coffee and tried to figure out what came next in life after caffeine.

“Have a shower, Jim. Or do you want to talk now and, I don’t know, do the ritual cleansing afterwards?”

“Who knows how long the talking will take. I won’t be long.”

Blair hadn’t finished his coffee when Jim emerged and loped across the living space to sit in the chair opposite Blair. It had been long enough for Blair to be aware of a rising restlessness that was soothed at the sight of Jim. “God, we both look like crap,” Blair said. And they did. Blair had finally looked himself in the eye in the bathroom mirror. He’d looked tired, drawn, inadequately washed, and unshaven, just like Jim. “Do you know where to start with this? Because I don’t.”

“Let’s start with the obvious. Do you want to press charges?”

“That’s the obvious? Oh, come on!”

Jim laid out a clip-voiced list. “Kidnapping in the second degree with sexual motivation. Assault. A good attorney could probably argue that one down to third degree if you take sentinel senses into account; second degree if you don’t. Rape.”

“Nobody raped me,” Blair said coldly. “You can get that idea out of your head right now.”

“Yeah, sure, Chief, it was sweet seduction all the way.”

Blair was on his feet, standing furiously over Jim. “No! I do not want to fucking lay any charges against you! Or against those other idiots for that matter.”

“A group of sentinels like that, with a susceptible guide. They might as well have roofied you. You had no choice when I walked in. No choice at all.”

Blair’s throat grew tight. Susceptible? Was that what he was? “I had enough choice to wait for you.”

“I don’t recall you being asked,” Jim said, his hands flicking something away as if in disgust – Blair’s opinion maybe. Blair felt sick. So much for that ‘confirmation’ that the other sentinels had sought. There was only confirmation that Jim had done whatever had been needed to get Blair out of that farmhouse - but not anything that he’d wanted in the cold light of day. 

Blair crossed his arms and tried to control himself. Agitated pacing ensued rather than calm. “Yeah, I wasn’t asked. And I wasn’t told much either. I have the basics, but they didn’t come from you. What the hell has been going on? A year and a half of our lives and you knew things. You knew how important my study was, and all the time you’re… what? Sitting there and laughing at the dumb ass reinventing the wheel?’

“No. I never fucking laughed at you.” Jim stayed seated, his hands clenched in his lap, his eyes blazing, a defiant witness in the dock.

“Then what were you doing?”

The bright gaze turned upon the floor. “I had some stuff to work out.” An odd wistfulness broke through the containment but Blair wasn’t willing to give any ground.

“And I’m presuming that you didn’t expect Lorrie and David and Melly to come and carry me away like some sentinel version of the fucking Sabine women while you worked your shit out?”

“No! Look, Sandburg, when we first met, I didn’t know who you were. For all I knew, you were another one of the Watts groupies trying a new tack, and even when I figured out that wasn’t the case you had your flaky moments when we started this.”

Blair stepped back as if slapped. “So you were waiting to see if I would stop being flaky?” he sneered. “I did a damn good job of helping you from the word go, Jim. Who the hell gave you the right to road test my help to see if it was worthy?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what it sounds like.” Blair turned on his heel and strode out to the front porch. He stopped there, one hand grabbing a wooden pillar and he stared out over the woodland and then towards the sky above the trees. There was the creak of Jim’s weight upon the porch steps. Blair waited, knowing what would come next, and it did. There was Jim’s warmth behind him, Jim’s arms around him. Blair leaned back into it despite himself.

“Chief. When you showed up, it was a hell of a relief. Knowing what was going on wasn’t the same thing as knowing how to deal with it. And I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you soon, before those morons interfered. I had it all laid out.”

So Jim had a plan before this. Blair was still angry with him, and it was hard to be so angry with someone that he needed so desperately that even in this moment he wanted to burrow into their skin. Jim’s hands were tight clasped across Blair and he laid his own hands over the top, rubbing his thumb over bone and tendon. “What do we do? When this thing wears off? How do we work this out?”

“We work it out however we want to. Once this is over, you can do whatever you want.” 

“Whatever I want. What about what you want?”

Jim was silent behind him, recognising a challenge and not concern. Then he planted a peck of a kiss on the top of Blair’s ear and said, “What I want is a shave. And some soap. Real food and coffee. Clean shorts. Want to go for a drive?” He released Blair and waited as Blair chose between temptations – the time out and comforts that Jim offered, or to continue thrashing out the rights and wrongs of this crazy situation.

After a short, sharp struggle, Blair succumbed to the temptation of clean shorts. Jim locked up and they got into his car and drove back down the road. It took about half an hour (fifteen minutes on a dirt road, fifteen minutes on asphalt) to reach Winthrop, which was distinctively western themed.

“Oh man. Talk about a tourist trap,” Blair said, in disgusted fascination.

Jim only grinned. “When the highway passed it by, the town fathers took action. It seems to have worked out for them. Fishing and hiking in the summer, skiing in the winter. A lot of cowboy hats all seasons of the year.” He looked out the window straight ahead of them. “Steven was really into cross-country skiing when he was younger. I guess he spent some time up here after I went into the army.”

“So this is like your family vacation home, then?”

“No home of mine, Chief. But my mother sent me the key for the place, and I kept it. Sentimental bull, but I guess it was useful.”

“Yeah. You wouldn’t want to ‘bond’ where anyone from Cascade could see you,” Blair said. He’d been riding a fine line between the simmering anger at Jim for keeping his mouth shut about something so relevant to his study, and an incredibly inappropriate insecurity about how the other sentinels were willing to make what was obviously an important connection after a few hours acquaintance, but months weren’t enough for Jim; and then he realised what he’d just said. His hand flew to his mouth in a vain attempt to shut his mouth after the words had bolted.

There was a hideously uneasy silence in the car, and then Jim said, “It’s okay. Come on, we need to go shopping.”

~*~  
Blair had insisted that they divide up the shopping tasks and do them separately. He explained it all very rationally (“it’ll be quicker,” “less temptation to indulge inappropriate PDAs,” “think of it as a test,”) but he knew the reason that Jim agreed was their mutual distress over Blair’s enormous foot in his equally capacious mouth. Absence, even the minutes it took for Blair to buy them each a couple of changes of socks and underpants and t-shirt, and for Jim to make a speedy groceries and drug store run, made the heart grow fonder, and Blair looked for and found a welcoming smile when he got back to the car. He got in and leaned back with a sigh.

“Miss me?” he asked.

A firm grasp on his upper arm was the only answer he got before Jim started the engine.

On the drive back, that comfort from Jim’s presence crossed once more into appreciation that he was a fine looking man and that previously merely bi-curious Blair Sandburg definitely wanted a piece of that. Blair found himself looking at Jim out of the corner of his eye the way he would when some pretty girl crossed his path and he was trying not to be too obvious.

They were on one of the rare, straight patches of road, and Jim ran one hand along Blair’s leg, from knee to pretty close to groin, and grinned at the result.

Blair had never been any good at not being obvious with the girls either.

“This is what it’s always like?” Blair asked. “Bonding?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“This is pretty, um, insistent. I think I’m getting why the others didn’t think that you were interested in having me as a guide. They were adamant that you didn’t and if twenty four hours was long enough to make a choice from their point of view and you hadn’t touched me after eighteen months then I see their point of view.” Jim opened his mouth as if to say something and Blair said hurriedly, “See it, not agree with it.”

Jim grew more wary, but he shrugged, on his guard but willing at least to talk. “You’re important to me. Just because I didn’t jump your bones two days after meeting you-“

“Meeting flaky me,” Blair said, because that still stung. It stung worse because, looking back, memory supplied him with some uncomfortable examples of why Jim might have sometimes thought that, and some of them weren’t even so long ago. 

That on again, off again thing with Samantha. Joking about sending Steven to Peru to see if he was a sentinel too. (Except Steven wasn’t on the Watts community family tree. Looked like that would have been a waste of grant money.) “What happened to this thing called the truth?” Jim had asked him, after the church arsons case. “Oh, yeah, that. That's, uh... totally overrated. Yeah,” Blair had replied, and Jim had laughed. He’d thought it was funny. At the time.

Apparently, Jim thought the truth overrated too, since Blair had to wait this long for him to cough up some very pertinent facts.

“Sandburg,” Jim growled. “Give me a break. I wasn’t going to jump into bed with someone I barely knew because some nineteenth century loony-tune decreed that kinky sex was okay so long as you got your guide out of it. And once we knew each other I wasn’t going to crash and burn a good friendship either.”

“Well, you know me now. And hell, maybe some kinky sex would enhance a good friendship.”

Jim’s jaw muscles got a work out but he spoke without obvious sarcasm. “Who knows?”

“So would ‘bonding’ have happened if the late twentieth century loony-tunes hadn’t intervened?” 

“I was thinking about it.”

Blair shut his eyes. “I figured you were lounging around in your underwear a little too purposefully recently. Is that why you never told me about them? Because you were making up your mind whether you wanted me that way or not and you knew they’d be competition? God, you’re as big a prick as they thought you were.”

“Do you want us to go back and ask them how we break it?” Jim’s voice was ice and stone, and his hands lay white-knuckled over the steering wheel. “They’d jump at the chance.”

“No!”

“Then it’s done now.” Jim’s voice gentled. “It’s done, Chief.”

“Done.” Jim has done me, Blair thought. Oh man, yes he has. He said nothing more on the drive and when they reached the cabin once more he helped unload and put away their supplies with the minimum of speech.

The stove ran off the same gas cylinders that heated the water. There was a toaster in a kitchen cupboard and they made toast and omelettes – breakfast food for early evening – and ate like the starving men that they were, standing leaning against the kitchen counters, shoulder to shoulder. Blair dumped his plate in the sink and hauled Jim close by the expedient of grabbing his belt.

“One moment we’re just two guys standing around stuffing their faces, and then I realise that I want to make you come so hard that your fucking toes sweat.”

Jim licked his ear. “Toe sweat? You said you were into kinky sex, but I had no idea.”

“Shut up,” Blair said, and led them into the bedroom and started stripping off his clothes. A thought struck him. “Oh my god, we fail at gay sex. And you fail at shopping.”

Jim looked confused for a moment, his shirt hanging off one shoulder, and then defiance crossed his face. “We can manage without lube.” His shirt hit the floor and Blair watched the flex of beautiful muscle with greedy enjoyment.

“And condoms?” There had been none their first time, and Blair wondered if that was a sentinel guaranteed bill of health, or simple risk taking. “We can manage, but we could have a lot more fun with the appropriate supplies.” Jim dropped his pants and Blair came close enough to palm his ass. “How far does bonding take us, Jim? Would you let me fuck you?”

Jim let Blair touch him, his head fallen back, his eyes shut, while Blair lazily stroked him, his hand travelling up into the small of Jim’s back and down again across rounded, sweet flesh to the tops of Jim’s thighs and up again. It was early evening, still daylight outside, and they had all the time in the world.

“If you wanted to,” Jim said softly.

“We definitely fail,” Blair said. “But let’s see how far managing can take us.”

~*~

They showered together about ten o’clock that night, and they shaved, watching each other, while Blair commented on their topsy-turvy circadian rhythms and Jim expressed a strong opinion that he was going to scratch his jaw off if he didn’t lose the bristles, and that since he wanted to keep the skin on his thighs in one piece that Blair might as well lose the beard as well. Blair nodded and stared at his face in the bathroom mirror with extra attention, since it was the first time he’d seen it since he’d gone down on Jim. No condoms then either, but that was Blair’s risk to take. He still looked like himself.

Naked, they made the bed up with clean sheets and extra blankets and tumbled into it. Blair had smelled Jim fresh from the shower before, but not this close-up, and not with the added stimulus of cool, clean skin. He stroked his hand up Jim’s forearm, comparing the hairiness and breadth of it to the smooth, perfumed delicacy of the women he’d slept with over the last year. Molly. Samantha.

“You don’t know much more than I do about what to expect from this, do you?” he asked.

Jim lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. “You probably figured out that I didn’t hang out that much with the Watts crowd.”

“Understatement of the year, man. I think they were scandalised by how little I knew about them, which is ironic given that they were presenting me with a mattress and a choice of candidates for sex. What did Lorrie mean?”

“Which part?” Jim said, turning onto his side.

“Lorrie and you. You said that I was your guide, and Lorrie said that you were my sentinel, but that didn’t make me your guide. What was that about?”

It wasn’t even twenty-four hours ago that Jim had marched into that farm house with his gun, and they’d fucked, and it certainly wasn’t the first time since then that Jim had looked deeply uncomfortable.

“This thing, it goes both ways, Sandburg.”

Blair frowned before he tried out an idea. “It’s not just a guide thing. Sentinels _and_ guides bond.” A flush rose over his skin. “I don’t exactly remember us having sex before last night.”

“I told you that I was thinking about this.” 

Blair waited. “Yes?” More waiting and Blair turned to his stomach and propped himself on his elbows, all the better to have that little extra psychological domination over Jim. Everyone the same height lying down? Not if Blair could fix it. “Come on, Jim.”

“I’m a sentinel. And I try to give you your privacy. But sometimes it’s harder than others. I’d listen in on you.”

“When I jerked off,” Blair said, with academic calm.

“Yeah. And even when you do jerk off, when you’re between women sometimes nature takes matters into its own hands.”

“As it were. I’m a virile guy.” Not so academic.

Jim glared. “You were dreaming one night. And I heard you. I came downstairs and I stood by your door and I… joined in.” An embarrassed flush coloured Jim’s face. “Like some creep. And I felt it building, in my head. I didn’t know for sure, but I could guess and I kept on going anyway.” He shrugged. “So now you know.”

“That was indeed kind of creepy. But also hot.” That was no more than truth. The idea of Jim, leaning against the wall to his room and touching himself while following Blair in a sex dream… But there was more to it than just that. Carefully, Blair tapped his finger against Jim’s skull. “It must have been weird too, though. And scary, even if you knew what was going on. Or suspected anyway.” Blair leaned down, resting his head on one arm. “Did it make a difference to you?” he asked, wondering if a happier, healthier sentinel did better with his senses, wondering how that one-way connection had worked. Lorrie had known what it was and she hadn’t approved.

“It helped me find you, so I guess so.”

“It helped you find me?” Blair bit his lip. Jim had mentioned that Campus Security handed over his backpack. Leaving that behind was what he would have expected from panicky amateurs. He’d assumed, well, a combination of detective work and the more familiar sentinel abilities after that. Apparently not, and the implications made his heart race. “So, what, you have a Blair Sandburg radar inside your head now? Do I get a Jim Ellison radar too?”

“I don’t know, Sandburg!” There was angry heat in the words but not in the way that Jim laid an arm across Blair’s back and leaned his face in close against Blair’s body. “We’ve been working on this thing a while, you and your tests. Maybe it’s a combination of everything? Maybe this other stuff is just incidental.” 

“Some incidental,” Blair said, meaning their current naked, bed-sharing state, and Jim didn’t pretend not to understand him.

“It could be incidental. Give it another couple of days and we won’t need to be joined at the hip anymore. We can go back to Cascade and just carry on like always.” Jim’s face remained hidden as he made this offer, and Blair stared at the sheet and the pillow and tried to work out the unexpected surge of denial in him.

“Is that what you want?”

“You didn’t get any chance to go into this with your eyes open,” Jim said. “There aren’t any agreements to hold you to. We’re bonded, that’ll keep the others out of your hair.”

It wasn’t an answer, none of it. Blair had the same impression that he’d had when they left the sentinels’ gathering house, of deep unhappiness under that quiet, matter-of-fact surface, and now he was starting to wonder about where that certainty came from. “Let’s get over being joined at the hip first. I want to see what the new normal actually feels like before I decide anything.”

Jim rolled to lie on his back once more. “You wouldn’t want your decision making clouded by sex, now would you?” Jim asked. There was a sour twist to his lips that Blair chose to ignore in favour of the affection in his eyes.

“I am perfectly capable of making decisions that my dick has no say in,” Blair said, but that was belied by the rush that ran through him. He closed the last inch or so between them and draped himself over Jim. “Right now isn’t one of them, I’ll give you that,” he said softly, and lowered his mouth for a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim's list of possible charges is hopefully correct since I couldn't find the exact wording for pre-2003 changes to the Washington State criminal code.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back to sex as well as angst, as well as a hopefully believable happy ending. I was tweaking this up to the last minute so I'm quite happy if people point out grammar or spelling screw-ups.

They judged Friday after lunch as good a time as any to head back to Cascade and Blair walked into the loft with a sense of homecoming and anxiety. This had been the place he’d yearned for in all its familiarity – spaces, smells, his belongings and Jim’s mingled around, everything the way he remembered it. Jim headed for the fridge. 

“There’s beer,” he said. “And it’s Friday. You want one?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They flopped on opposite chairs and Blair tried to find that home peace he’d wished for. Everything was the same, except for how everything was different.

“You’re okay?” he asked Jim.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Because we were in bed together this morning and now you won’t look at me, Blair thought. How about that, Jim? But he didn’t say it. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking, man.”

Jim tilted his bottle in grave, apologetic salute. “I’m fine. You’re the one who said you wanted to find out what normal felt like. We can go back to how we were before. Give the status quo a try.”

That quiet suggestion was evidence that Jim regretted whatever convergence of instinct had led them to this. If Jim had valued the other sentinels’ approach, if he’d thought the bonding process was all that, he wouldn’t have kept his distance and his silence all this time. Whatever Jim might have been working up to in the privacy of his head and his home, the last few days had been one big messy accident and now it was time to clean up and sweep it all away. Blair felt foolishly disappointed and humiliated, all the more so because he wasn’t convinced. Not quite.

“The status quo,” Blair said and tried to smile.

~*~

The status quo was hard to regain. Blair liked sex, not something that would surprise anyone who’d ever known him, and he kept getting ambushed by recollection about what sex was like with Jim at the most inopportune times. Jim had to know it. He did know it, and Blair knew that because Jim was far less casual about wandering the loft in his underwear or a loosely belted robe. A bond, according to the Watts sentinels, was supposedly cause for happiness. Blair wasn’t seeing it, not for either of them.

He was stalled on his dissertation. He kept running through his notes, trying to annotate them in the light of what he’d learned and he became increasingly aware that it wasn’t going to work. He’d begun with studying Jim so that he could finally see the amazing reality of a sentinel. Out in Washington State and up and down the whole western coast was an entire community of them. But somewhere along the line studying sentinels became an excuse to be with Jim. He wanted to help Jim. He loved him, and he’d loved him before they lay down together in front of hostile watchers. 

He just didn’t know what to do with the knowledge, any more than he knew what to do with his papers and his notes.

He tried once. Leaned over Jim while he sat at the dining table, with one hopeful hand resting gently on his shoulder, a smile on his face. Jim accepted the kiss, turned to Blair like a flower to the sun. But then he carefully pushed him away.

“Irresistible I may be, but not now, okay?”

“So when? Make me an appointment. My schedule’s always open when it comes to you, you know that.”

Jim stood, and folded his newspaper for the trash. “Sandburg, just let it be.”

“No can do, Jim. When I said I wanted to see what normal felt like, I didn’t mean that I wanted to wipe out what happened, just that I wanted to give things a chance to settle.”

“They have settled.”

Angry words crowded in Blair’s mouth, but he kept an ultimatum back. Jim Ellison could accept Blair in his bed; or else some girl (or man; trying out this new found bisexuality could be a kick, a real kick, especially in Jim’s ass) could have a chance to get lucky with Blair Sandburg.

Jim had wanted Blair, one way or another, or why the discreet display that Blair had noted and considered, why the confession to the one-sided bond? But the Watts sentinels had spoiled it, presented Jim with the thing he wanted but only on their terms. Blair didn’t know which of them he wanted to hit more. Jim wasn’t a man to take things on other people’s terms, and Blair wasn’t ready to risk any words that neither of them could take back. Yet.

~*~  
“You call for back-up and you stay here,” Jim commanded and followed Miller onto the construction site, gun in hand.

“Same old,” Blair muttered, and called for help and waited, increasingly anxious, looking up at the ten storeys of unfinished, semi-derelict building that Miller had made his lair, and wondering what was going on. Did he hear a shot? It was hard to tell with city noises all around him. Movement riveted him, as a window frame swung out around the seventh floor and Blair cried out in horror when someone, a man dark-clad in pants and jacket, plummeted out and down. It wasn’t Jim, but Blair’s gaze followed his fall, rigid with shock at the sight of the man’s appalled, despairing face, until he hit the ground and lay still. 

Blair gingerly approached, but saw no evidence that this man was still alive. It wasn’t Miller, either, and the thought occurred that Miller could have yet more accomplices or hostages in the building. Blair was sure that he heard more shots. There were sirens coming, but waiting was unbearable and Blair sprinted into the building. The long flights of raw concrete stairs slowed his head-long charge but not his determination and he shakily shoved his way through a door with ‘10’ painted on the stairwell side in worn yellow paint. He did _not_ call out Jim’s name. He didn’t have the breath. Instead he picked his hasty, direct way through broken, partitioned sections, past a roll of dusty carpet, to the far end of the building.

Miller lay on the concrete floor, wallowing in a mess of some white, clumped substance that was swirled and stained with the red of blood. It smelled chemically sharp and a split, three gallon tub on the floor suggested that it was carpet glue. Miller must have thrown it at Jim, or Jim thrown it at him, and now Jim leaned against the wall, retching with hoarse, choking rasps that nearly set Blair off into his own nausea.

“Jim? Jim? Are you okay?” 

Jim took a heaving breath. His eyes watered and his nose and mouth were shiny red. “Miller?” he wheezed. 

Blair waded into the mess and put two fingers to the pulse point at Miller’s throat without much hope. The man’s eyes were half-lidded and blankly staring. Blair shook his head, and turned away. He was more concerned for Jim, and put his arms around him.

“I guess we chalk another one up to your sensitivities. Come on, Jim, you can’t help anyone like this. Let’s get you away from this.”

They shambled their way towards the stairwell, collapsing onto the floor while Blair spoke quietly about dials and control, and Jim gradually returned to a more normal breathing pattern. Jim’s face was smeared with the remnants of vomit and saliva, and Blair’s shoes and jeans were probably a lost cause, but all that Blair could think about was how Jim fitted inside the circle of his arms. He needed to take Jim home, to some cleaner air, and help him strip and shower and-

Okay, this sensation was familiar, this empty, desperate questioning inside Blair that only had one answer. He sat back, and Jim turned his head to follow Blair’s movement. Blair knew that light in Jim’s eyes; outraged surprise that this feeling had chosen this moment, followed closely by a shamed apology that Blair wasn’t interested in and didn’t want. That was the point where an armed patrolman burst through the door. It was a distraction, and also the opportunity to struggle downstairs without either an argument or any action that would have landed them with public indecency charges.

Simon was outside on the sidewalk, his face twisted in distaste at the dead man now covered with a tarpaulin. Clean-up ensued, the forensic variety, not the sort that increasingly obsessed Blair and made him snappish and terse. He kept flashing on an image of Jim naked in the shower with almost photographic intensity 

Simon was taking advantage of the outdoors and his position behind the tape to smoke a cigar. “At least Miller was stopped, but IA is going to raise merry hell.”

“IA can wait,” Blair said shortly, digging in the back of Jim’s car for a water bottle. “Jim had a bad reaction to some chemicals up there. I’d like to get him home, Simon.” He passed the water to Jim, who took in and spat out about three mouthfuls. “How are your eyes?” He pressed up close, his hand cupping Jim’s face, and felt him tense. Jim’s gaze flicked to Simon, who was staring at them both. Blair took a breath and stepped back.

“We’ve got the basics covered,” Simon said. “Take him home, Sandburg, but we’ll need serious paperwork done tomorrow.”

Blair’s gently pushed Jim into the passenger side of his car. He sat there, his fists clenched in his lap. “Hurry up and get us out of here,” Jim growled.

“Give me your keys and I will.”

They were handed over; the brush of warmth from Jim’s hand made Blair shiver, and Jim’s eyelids flutter. Blair threw himself into the driver’s seat and pulled out. “Hey, Jim. You remember last time, the hand on the knee thing? I think that would be a good idea.”

Jim’s answer was his fingers digging into the muscle of Blair’s thigh. Crazy fantasies of pulling over into some alley kept overtaking Blair the way he wanted to overtake every single Cascade driver who blocked his way – which was all of them. But it was six o’clock in the evening and there was nowhere that was private enough except home. Just get us home, Blair told himself, before Jim cuts off the circulation in my leg.

They walked up the stairs at Prospect like drunks, awkwardly and inextricably entwined despite the narrowness of the stairs.

“We both need a shower,” Blair said, his first words since he’d suggested that Jim hold onto him.

“I know,” Jim said, and without any more comment began stripping off his clothes. He was shirtless by the time he reached the bathroom, with Blair close behind and following his example. They kicked the rest of their clothes into an untidy huddle on the bathroom floor and Jim stepped under the water, face turned to the nozzle and pulled Blair against him, Blair’s back to his chest. Water poured everywhere, and Blair fumbled for the soap. Bending was impossible, but he lathered where he could and hoped that any residual glue stink was washed away from his skin.

“Better?” he asked. He knew exactly where this was going to end – upstairs in Jim’s big bed, but he felt more in control of himself; like a man who wanted sex rather than a junkie in need of a fix.

Jim nodded. “My throat hurts, but the rest of me is okay.” His hands wandered over Blair, stroking his arms, his chest.

“How are your senses?”

“I’m okay. I’m clean, you’re clean, my nose is clear.” Jim mouthed at Blair’s shoulder, a taste rather than a kiss. “We need to get upstairs.” 

They exited the shower and dried each other. Jim wrapped a towel around Blair’s back and used the edges of it to pull Blair close while he kissed him. Naked and nearly dry, they walked up the stairs, Jim leading the way, Blair following behind and not watching his steps. They fell on the bed together, Jim unfazed by Blair’s still damp hair against his linens. All he did was brush it away from Blair’s face and kiss him with soft, frantic touches of his mouth.

“What have you got in your nightstand?”

Jim lifted his head, his eyes dazed.

“You said that I could fuck you. If I wanted,” Blair said. 

The dazedness cleared, to be replaced with a more present, aware expression. “And you’re a guy who fixates on an idea, aren’t you, Sandburg?” It was too on guard for a man as clearly turned on as Jim and Blair took Jim’s face into the cup of his hand and squeezed, a warning touch.

“Yeah, I want to. I want it a lot. And you want it too, so we’re okay, man. We’re okay.” 

Jim rubbed against Blair’s hand like a big cat accepting a caress. “What you need is in the top drawer.”

“Then get it for me.”

Jim hesitated – not because of unwillingness, but because letting go of Blair was a struggle.

“Do it, Jim. My skin might not be touching you, but I’ll be looking. At everything you’ve got, man.” A sharp inhale, an equally sharp nod and Jim moved the small distance (the lengthy, empty expanse) to grab necessities out of a drawer and returned, dropping them into Blair’s outstretched hand.

“You’re the expert,” Jim said. So, that wasn’t forgotten.

“If you ever want the details all you have to do is ask,” Blair said, leaning close to nearly whisper it into Jim’s ear.

A long shiver ran the length of Jim’s body. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

He lay down, the same way that Blair had lain down for him, face resting in cradled arms, and Blair sat astride him. “I’ll get round to the good stuff, but I want to touch you.” He leaned down to kiss between Jim’s shoulder blades, resting his hands along Jim’s ribs. “You’re beautiful. Every inch of you.”

“Yeah. I hear my gall bladder makes strong men weep.” It was smart-ass in principle, but Blair observed the struggle. It was what he did. He figured Jim out, sometimes more successfully than others.

“You need this bad, don’t you?” He ran a single palm along the powerful musculature, exploring the slope, the rise and fall.

“And you don’t?”

Blair carefully settled himself full length and full weight across Jim’s back. “Yeah, I need it. I missed this, Jim. For your information, the status quo fucking sucks.” He rubbed his jaw slowly along the base of Jim’s neck and touched his tongue to the clean, smooth skin, feeling all of Jim beneath him – the shape of him, the warmth, the shallow breath. “Beautiful,” he said softly, and reluctantly shifted to lie on the bed, the better to reach Jim’s ass.

It was like a dream – not a daytime fantasy, but the midnight pictures dredged up from the dark - to put his hands on Jim, in Jim, and hear the noises that he made. “Up,” Blair begged. “Up on your knees, now, please.” Jim obeyed, splayed out in front of Blair without shame, and Blair leaned over him and took what he needed, what they both needed. Another low groan forced its way out of Jim’s throat, and another, while Blair folded himself around him and forced Jim to take nearly all of his weight. 

Jim’s cock rose hard and high and since Blair was thoroughly braced against his body it was easy to touch and own it, just the way that Blair owned Jim’s ass. Every single part of him, all Blair’s, and he played with Jim mercilessly – touches that made Jim cry out but weren’t enough to let him come. So good, to hold that heavy column of flesh and wring those noises out of Jim Ellison, but Blair finally took pity and gave Jim a firmer hold, a fist to fuck himself into while Blair pretty much held on for the ride. It ended in silence and slow writhing under Blair’s body and then Jim was still, panting for breath.

Blair hadn’t come yet and he straightened up, not losing his connection with Jim and with great deliberation wiped his hand over Jim’s back. He had barely enough detachment to note that condoms and this compulsion really did not mix. The unopened packet still lay on the bed. Then he grasped Jim’s hips, looking down at his cock, and Jim’s stretched, reddened skin where they were joined. “This isn’t the end of this,” Blair murmured, and moved, pushing his way to an orgasm that whited out his vision and left him draped limp and gasping over Jim. Jim finally sank to lie on the mattress and Blair went with him, the two of them tangled over the bed and each other, close enough to feel each other’s breath on their skins.

Blair shifted enough that he was lying more on the mattress than Jim. “So it looks like this is more complicated than we thought.” Blair lightly laid his hand on Jim’s nape. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t get why you think you’re the one who has to be sorry about this, Sandburg.”

“This is supposed to help you,” Blair began but Jim put his palm across his mouth with unexpected fierceness.

“This wasn’t about tuning up my sentinel senses. Why the hell would you think this was ever about that?”

Blair drew back from the silencing palm, but kept his own hand where it was, gently running across the back of Jim’s neck. He could feel the tiny short hairs where Jim’s barber ran the clippers. “I know, Jim, I know. We love each other, and that’s okay. It’s what makes this okay.”

Jim’s eyes shut fast and the silence lay heavy for a moment, before Jim kissed Blair, sweetly, gently. “Yeah. Okay.”

They lay more easily together, skin touching skin, and Blair eventually ventured some thoughts. “Speaking of things that are okay, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t get whatever the fringe benefits are out of the bond. The others were all about that.”

Jim’s mouth twisted in disgust. “I do not want those clowns in my personal life. Again.”

“Sorry. Sometimes I just wish I could ask them about this.” And about a million other things.

“Why shouldn’t you?”

Jim didn’t recoil at Blair’s look, but it was surely sour enough that he should have. “Well, maybe because I can tell exactly how enthusiastic you are about that idea. And also because I’m not going there and telling them that we don’t have a fucking clue. There is no way I’m putting you or me in that position of vulnerability with those self-righteous… asshats! We’re just going to have to work this one out ourselves.”

Jim nodded. “That would be better.”

“I already have an idea, but I’m not entirely sure that you’re going to like it.” Blair sat up and eyed the wires where a comfortable bedhead or wall should be with suspicion. “How the hell do you sit up comfortably in here?”

“I lie down and sleep or I get out of bed,” Jim said, like it was the most self-evident thing in the world.

“Action man,” Blair said fondly and got out of bed, grabbed Jim’s robe, and then with his trophy caught around him, returned to sit cross legged alongside his… sentinel? His friend? His lover?

Jim smirked. “Nice view.”

Blair looked briefly down at the gap in the robe and then tilted Jim’s chin. “I grabbed it for warmth, not modesty taboos. Look me in the eye, buddy. We have serious stuff to deal with. Bonding.” He paused. It was still hard to say that word without putting mental quotes around it. ‘Bonding’. That process that made healthy, happy sentinels. “Jim.” Another pause. How to explain this without sounding utterly self-serving. “We assumed that the crazy, wanting sex right now thing would die down once the bond was set. Right? You had that impression, so there’s a way to stabilise this. What if, if we don’t want to get ambushed at inconvenient times… what if we need to be having sex on a regular basis?” He mumbled it in a rush.

Jim leaned on an elbow, thinking. Whatever he was thinking about didn’t look like it pleased him. Then he put one hand over Blair’s ankle. Blair let it lie there a moment before he took Jim’s hand into his own and held hard. “I know that you’re not entirely comfortable with how this turned out, but I don’t mind, Jim. I really, really don’t mind. And I know that the Watts community are not your favourite people but they’re the ones that know things and all I can do is work from what they told me and extrapolate.”

“Christ, we’re in a mess, aren’t we?” Blair’s hand was released, and Jim sat up, naked in the middle of the disarrayed bed linens, back straight and head bowed. A man waiting for punishment. “I’m sorry, Blair. I didn’t mean it to be this way.”

Blair never had been into punishment. “So how did you mean it to be?”

“I don’t know!” The burst of temper subsided. “I knew that I’d have to tell you eventually.”

“Truer words were never spoken, but I understand some of the waiting. There was a dysfunctional situation there, and I’m presuming that the ever sweet Ellison personality wasn’t the whole cause.” 

“Like you said, Chief. Self-righteous asshats. And my mom was pushing me into getting involved, and there are times I’m not real interested in listening to her. But once I’d made my side of the connection I knew it was past time. I thought if I played up the family issues you’d be more likely to understand why I hadn’t told you earlier.” A knowing, rueful grin acknowledged this effort at manipulation.

“To forgive you for being a close-mouthed son of a bitch, you mean? Machiavellian, man.” 

Jim forced out a chuckle but the self-deprecating humour dipped into sadness as he spoke. “I would have told you the deal, and this is you we’re talking about, Sandburg. Arcane sentinel lore plus sex? You would have gone for it like a kid after candy. We could have led up to it. Dinner and dancing, or a walk along Montague Pier anyway. You would have known what you were getting into. We could have done that part the right way.”

“So, dinner and a romantic walk along the harbour and then once we’d consummated everything you’d swoop me off to meet the family?” Blair laughed; nervous, dorky laughter. “It sounds like the set-up for a marriage proposal, man.”

The quietly vulnerable man on the bed beside Blair was abruptly contained in a prickly shell. “You’d have to be pretty stupid to offer that to the last of the peace and free love hippie boys, wouldn’t you.” Jim got off the bed and dug into a drawer for a pair of sweat pants.

Blair gaped and tried to recover some self-possession. “At least you were willing to actually give me some information and options, however eventually. Which just proves that I did the right thing in choosing you, because you give a damn about me rather than whatever genetics put this thing in my head. Because it’s there. How long did you think I spent looking for you today?”

Jim looked up from fiddling with the drawstring of his pants. “I’m guessing not long.”

“The only reason it wasn’t a straight line was crappy building issues, Jim. Straightest, fastest path possible, and I didn’t even think about it at the time, I just did it.” Blair got off the bed and walked across the floor to Jim. “I didn’t mean to laugh, but looking at it like that brought some things home. I, uh, haven’t really thought of myself as a prospect for a long term relationship.”

“Like I’m any better? Who’s the guy who married in haste and repented in haste too?” Jim looked shy.

“What if I’d said no?” Blair asked. “Proclaimed my eternal heterosexuality? What if I’d been pissed off enough to say screw you?”

“Then I still would have introduced you to the family. If you’d been that pissed off – I’d still have owed you.”

“But you were hoping that I’d say yes, weren’t you? To dinner and a walk along the pier and getting the Watts people handed over like an apology and a wedding gift all tied up together?”

Jim decided that the bed needed straightening. “You would have kicked my ass and decided to do this however you wanted anyway,” he said to the comforter.

There was an odd twist of emotion inside Blair – disappointment for Jim, and himself too, that those hopeful, anticipatory plans had been swept from the table, and replaced with a coerced, desperate shotgun wedding.

“It would have been nice,” he said quietly to Jim’s back. “Your way.” Jim only nodded and plumped a pillow with unnecessary energy. “We’ll figure this out, and then maybe we could go back?”

Jim turned around, narrow eyed. 

“We could go to Tacoma a staid old bonded couple,” Blair said, and Jim grinned at that. “Because I want to know on my own behalf, but also… Jim, you’re one guy and they’re a whole community of people, spread out through several states. If they agree, if I can get only some of them to agree, then you’re out of the limelight. I turn in a whole new diss. My earlier subjects, the Watts people, _and_ you, but not just you.”

Blair sat on the edge of the pristine bed, thinking things out. “They’re not the whole community, the ones I met. There are other bonded sentinels and guides out there, and, man, I am not so enlightened that I wouldn’t take a shit-ton of pleasure showing them that it doesn’t have to be done in the Watts approved way.”

Jim sat beside him. “You’re so sure that you’re all that, huh?”

“That _we’re_ all that,” Blair said. “We could be. I know it. And you’re a guy who appreciates the value of a hearty ‘fuck you’.” Sardonic amusement was a good look on Jim and Blair leaned closer, catching Jim’s face in his hand and drawing him in for a kiss. “I’ve got the gift, apparently. I might as well use it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're unfamiliar with the phrase I use for my title, it's from the marriage service from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and variations of it are still used in weddings today:
> 
> _[Marriage] therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God._


End file.
